The firm intention of South Africa’s Impala Platinum (Implats) is to prosper on current platinum group metals (PGM) prices.

This was made clear by Implats CEO Nico Muller during the presentation of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed company’s financial year (FY) 2025 results for the six months to December 31, which highlighted liquidity headroom of R17.8-billion.

Muller spoke of having an “assured outlook” on PGM market prices going forward, with platinum, palladium and rhodium all in deficit currently, particularly platinum.

That, he said, would change for palladium and rhodium from 2028, with those two metals running into surpluses. But that would not be the case for platinum, for which there would be “a material increase” in demand, fuelled by the hydrogen economy as well as the advance of fuel cell electric vehicles.

“We foresee continued demand for platinum to the extent that we see sustained deficits, and therefore continued eradication of excess surface inventory.

“We do believe that there’s going to be some switching between platinum and palladium that will offset the surpluses created by palladium and, of course, platinum is less reliant on the automotive industry than the other two metals,” Muller outlined during the presentation covered by Engineering News & Mining Weekly.

Amid the majority of the great economic jurisdictions of the world having given PGMs strategic critical minerals status, discontinued use of, or demand for, PGMs was not on the cards, with the results of the last six months reflective of that.

Refined production rose 2%, sales 5%, and unit cost were held at 3%, which is reportedly industry leading for this reporting period.

Capital plunged down 42% to R3.9-billion, with operating strategy changes at particularly Impala Canada.

He emphasised that the world had in many respects been very stable over the last year.

“It’s not shooting sparks, but it is stable,” he said in pointing out the particular stability of PGM prices in dollars and only the strengthening of the rand by 5% being basket price negative.

“It’s probably been one of the more stable periods that we have operated in . . . and our intention as a company is to create continual strength in the organisation we call Implats.”

In Canada, the extraction philosophy has been amended towards being a higher margin business, “so you’ll see a reduction in production, probably a more accelerated wind-down”.

“We’re continuously evaluating the performance of the business, costs as well as palladium price performance, but to the extent that future viability or future cash flows are threatened, it will not be unsurprising that we will come with an announcement at some time in the future about potentially a more accelerated but responsible wind-down of that operation,” said Muller while emphasising that Implats was continuously involved with portfolio evaluations in the company to make sure that it honoured its statement that it would not support loss-making operations.